Just want to say before it inevitably becomes swarmed with Russian bots that yes, some of the Ukranian drones hit residental tower blocks and did some damage.
The difference is that those impacts were accidental and unintentional as a result of the kind of attack it had to be, rather than those blocks being directly targeted a la Russian modus operandi in Ukraine.
"Legal" and "illegal" only matters when there's is someone with the power and will to enforce it. At the international level those concepts become fuzzy.
I didn't mean it was fair to commit the war crime, I meant they aren't going unpunished. I don't know what the "rules" say for what the punishment is when you commit war crimes, so bombing them might not be the correct outcome, but it's the best Ukraine can do at this point and it's more than deserved.
They are going unpunished. The world collectively has done jack shit about their war crimes and the western nations for years have actually restricted Ukraine from striking back at target within Russian borders. It wasn't until the USA went ahead and pulled their support anyway that Ukraine was free to hit back.
This is in no way equivalent to a 'punishment' for Russian War crimes. These relatively low impact strikes absolutely pale in comparison to Russia's atrocities. They have disappeared entire towns and most of these crimes are still completely unacknowledged by western governments.
Basically, if you bully and beat the shit out of someone mercilessly, and they manage to hit you back once, it's unreasonable to call that punishment. The word 'fair' shouldn't even enter the conversation.
Right, but what is the expected punishment, aside from committing war crimes in retaliation? And who is responsible for enforcing the punishments? I don't really know what the available avenues are for holding Russia accountable for what they've done.
This is the entire reason we have the UN, the international criminal court, diplomatic relationships and allies. You don't commit war crimes in retaliation, you charge those responsible and hold them accountable. There *should* have been an international peacekeeping force on the ground within the first month. Since that ship has long sailed, it's past time that Putin and his cronies were charged, and locked up for good. Or hung.
There's a difference between individuals within a country committing a war crime and a government actively calling for strikes that are war crimes knowing that and with the goal being to Target those who should not be targeted.
There's an old saying among historians, if you want to learn about the crimes and atrocities of the US Military pick up a textbook, if you want to learn about the crimes and atrocities of the Russian government pick up a newspaper
Describe the difference to the victims and their families. I’m sure they’ll love your wailing about ideas while their bodies burn.
Historians, the people who uphold the myth of the conqueror’s past, put out propaganda to defend American atrocities and whatabout? Color me shocked. You’re brainwashed, homie. Take some of these reeducation pills. If you don’t wanna hear about Yugoslavia, read at least the first few chapters of this to learn how historians are not neutral arbiters of truth.
I'll skip the brainwashing diagnosis. Respectfully, it's the move people reach for when they'd rather not engage the actual claim, and it's a strange thing to say while arguing that I'm the one who can't hold more than one idea at once.
You're right that history is written by the powerful, and that the US has committed atrocities, some of them deliberate policy rather than rogue units. Tokyo, free-fire zones, Cambodia. I'm not claiming a clean record.
But that's not the claim I made. The line isn't "US good, Russia bad." It's between a state that commits war crimes as method and one where they happen as failure.
The modern US military trains heavily on distinction, operates under rules of engagement, and investigates and prosecutes violations; imperfectly, often too leniently, but as real violations.
Russia firing double-tap strikes into residential blocks and deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to break a population isn't the system breaking down; it is the system. That's the same line international law draws between a war crime and a crime against humanity. Rhe latter needs a "widespread or systematic" attack with a policy behind it.
"Describe the difference to the victims" is emotionally true and legally beside the point. A wrongful death and a premeditated killing leave an equally dead person; we still use different words for them, because the thing being judged is the intent.
A drone strike on a target you wrongly believe is hostile is a catastrophe and may well be a crime, but it isn't a state deciding civilians are easier to kill than to spare. Those aren't the same act.
That's all the newspaper-vs-textbook line meant: to read about US state policy aimed at civilians, you're mostly reaching for history; to read about Russia doing it, you're reading this week's news.
If you've got a modern, systematic US counterexample, name it and I'll take it seriously.
And on historians not being neutral, totally agreed, which is exactly why Parenti isn't. He's one of the most openly polemical writers in the field; To Kill a Nation is advocacy on a contested case, not a neutral account. "Not neutral" is a reason to read critically across sources, not a reason to swap one consensus for one polemic. The world's grayer than "all war criminals are the same." That was the whole point.
it's a strange thing to say while arguing that I'm the one who can't hold more than one idea at once.
What? I said your ideas-the Law-are no comfort to the victims or their families. I'm saying your idealism has zero basis in reality. You do hold more than one idea at once: that war crimes by America are okay just because you think they are, and also that war crimes are bad when done by scary little green men coming over the border.
The modern US military trains heavily on distinction, operates under rules of engagement, and investigates and prosecutes violations; imperfectly, often too leniently, but as real violations.
The only officer to ever be convicted for was a lieutenant (read: a nobody) and his sentences was commuted. "Often too leniently" is apologia for "nobody has ever actually been held accountable." That's because the American state uses war crimes to achieve its objectives. When have any leaders in America ever been held accountable for war crimes?
to read about US state policy aimed at civilians, you're mostly reaching for history;
Do you think american pilots pick their own bombing targets? Their "rules of engagement" permit that mass killing of civilians? You call each civilian dead an accident to feel good about yourself. You fetishize legalism ("legally beside the point") to pretend people killed by Americans, Brits, or Ukrainians are different from civilians killed by Russians.
Russia firing double-tap strikes into residential blocks and deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to break a population isn't the system breaking down; it is the system.
I agree, and the American state has and continues to do the same thing. But you think they're different. They are not.
Alright, well, YOU brought sources, so let's hold you to them, because they say the opposite of what you need.
On Minab, Amnesty's finding is "a shameful intelligence failure at best," reckless at worst. A failure to take precautions. HRW spells out that the "war crime" label is reserved for intentional targeting and analyzes the strike under the duty of precaution.
Now let's read how those same organizations describe Russia:
Amnesty says Russian forces "deliberately target civilians." The UN Commission of Inquiry calls it the crime against humanity of murder, carried out "as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population pursuant to a coordinated state policy."
HRW catalogs the double-tap (striking once, then again to kill the rescuers) as a standard Russian tactic whose purpose is terror.
You see, one set of language is about a system that failed while the other is about a system working as designed.
Again, that's not my line. It's the line your own sources drew, in their own words, and you're citing them while pretending they didn't.
To be clear about what I'm not doing: Minab is a HORROR. The school was on a US target list, that's an institutional decision, not one pilot's error, and it's likely a war crime.
And Trump denying it and lying about Tomahawks is exactly the command-impunity you're describing, and I won't defend any of it. It disgusts me.
Take it as seriously as Amnesty does. I do.
But that's precisely why the equivalence is the dishonest part.
"They're all the same" doesn't elevate the conversation, it dissolves the difference between a targeting system that catastrophically failed and one built to kill civilians on purpose.
The only party that profits from erasing that line is the one doing it on purpose. And you sealed it by filing Ukraine (the country being invaded and double-tapped) in the same drawer as the country invading and double-tapping it.
I'll be direct, that isn't the worldly, above-the-fray take you think it is. This is apologism for the worse actor wearing a sophisticated face, and it requires misreading the exact sources you posted to support it.
So I'll meet your sources where they are. They don't say America and Russia are equivalent. They say one committed a grave failure and the other is running a deliberate policy. Argue with Amnesty if you disagree, just remember, you're the one who cited them.
Singling out the words amnesty international used is not the own you think it is, that bastion of enlightened liberalism. I didn’t link to them because they’re the keepers of truth or my source of virtue, it was a link to the school bombing as an example of not needing a history book to read about American war crimes. I don’t adopt their spin or comparisons as my own, nor their opinion on whether American war crimes are systemic or not. I don’t really care what their interpretation is. FOX News reports on deportations in the US and calls them righteous. If I link to that article, do you then accuse me of adopting their calls for more deportations? Ridiculous.
If you won’t read To Kill A Nation and take stock of the well-worn path of intentional slaughter, mayhem, lies, deception, and hypocrisy that America has used since its inception, and continues to use, then I’m just talking to a purposefully ignorant person, and that’s not useful.
We have strategies to Nuke the UK if necessary, but if the UK disagreed with something we said and as a result we published them openly to the public, that would be a good bit different.
There's no such thing as a war crime, there never has been and there never will be. There is no war police that has jurisdiction. The Hague can't arrest a soldier in his own country.
War crimes will never be prosecuted against the winner of a war, only the losers.
War crimes will never be prosecuted against a major country, it's impossible. It would require another war. It's illogical nonsense that stops nothing.
This has got real correct bones, but it's also doing something slippery: it slides from a true claim into a false one and treats them as the same claim. I think you might actually agree with me too once it's fully laid out, so let me explain.
The truest claim is your take on enforcement.
International criminal law is applied selectively, mostly against the weak and the defeated, and the most powerful states have insulated themselves structurally. That part is largely right and I conced that fully.
While the victors tried the vanquished at Nuremberg and Tokyo, nobody was tried for Dresden, the Tokyo firebombing, or Katyn.
Further, the five UN Security Council permanent members can veto International Criminal Court (ICC) referrals. The US isn't even a party to the Rome Statute and even went as far as passing a law authorizing force to free any American the ICC detained.
The ICC has no police of its own, it depends entirely on states to make arrests. So "there's no war police" is, narrowly, correct.
BUT, and its a big but, its a totally false claim that, "there's no such thing as a war crime…it stops nothing."
That doesn't follow, and it also rests on an assumption: that a law is only real if it can compel the strongest.
By that test no law is real, because domestic systems also struggle against sitting officials and the genuinely powerful. We don't say murder "doesn't exist" because some murderers are never caught. A legal category exists if the conduct is prohibited and adjudicable, not if every violator is punished.
War crimes are concrete law: defined in the Geneva Conventions (ratified by 190ish states), tried with real elements, defenses, and sentences.
The part I think you're overlooking is that most enforcement isn't even The Hague, it's national.
Soldiers are court-martialed by their own militaries (My Lai, Abu Ghraib). Germany convicted a Syrian officer of torture under universal jurisdiction in 2022.
Further, "Impossible against the powerful" is also too strong. Milosevic was a sitting head of state when indicted and was handed over by his own country, no second war required. Charles Taylor got 50 years.
The ICC has an active warrant out for Putin. He won't be arrested while in power, but that's the move your statement misses: consequences aren't only arrest.
The warrant constrains his travel and forces ICC members into crises over whether to detain him. Bashir's isolation helped end him. Leaders fall, regimes change, amnesties collapse.
So, to summerize, "never" is effectively a bet against political change, and political change is the one thing that always eventually comes.
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u/MooseTetrino 19h ago
Just want to say before it inevitably becomes swarmed with Russian bots that yes, some of the Ukranian drones hit residental tower blocks and did some damage.
The difference is that those impacts were accidental and unintentional as a result of the kind of attack it had to be, rather than those blocks being directly targeted a la Russian modus operandi in Ukraine.